CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP
[p. 145] CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP
1 Corinthians 1:9; 1 Corinthians 10:15,16; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26
It is of great importance to see that when God in His grace laid hold of us and brought us to the knowledge of Himself, it was not His will to leave us as isolated individuals. Nor was it His mind that we should take a course of our own choosing as to fellowship with other saints. He has called us to the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord.
All believers are divinely called to this holy fellowship. Many may not have understood what they are called to; many may fail to answer to it, or may even be acting entirely contrary to it; but all who have received the forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Spirit are called by God to the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord. This makes it clear at the very outset that the bond of Christian fellowship is not a creed or a series of articles — however correct and scriptural such might be — nor does that bond consist in agreement on certain truths or doctrines. The bond of our fellowship is a Person — God’s Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. It could not possibly be asserted that there is anything sectarian or narrow about such a fellowship.
It is interesting to observe how this blessed Person forms the link between God and His saints. The fact that God’s Son is our Lord gives us a link with God, and it is our true and holy dignity as saints that in the midst of the world of the ungodly, we have a blessed link with God as revealed in grace and love.
The very fact that God has made Himself known by and in His Son marks the revelation as being one of perfect grace and love. The law came by Moses, and many a message from God came by prophets, but when the Son of God came here the fulness of grace and truth shone forth for men. How blessed to have the knowledge of God as revealed in grace and love in His blessed Son!
Now what was God’s great object in making Himself thus known? It was to break down all our self-willed distrust of Him, so that we might accept His authority and control. The authority of God and the power of His right hand are set forth in “Jesus Christ our Lord”. When we receive the knowledge of God in grace and love it makes us willing to [p. 146] accept His authority, because we are assured that it is an authority ever exercised for blessing towards us, and for our security from all that is evil. We receive the kingdom of God, and find it to be “righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit”. These things are conditional on God having His right place in our souls.
Romans 6 brings us to the point that we yield ourselves to God as those who are alive from the dead, and our members as instruments of righteousness to God. There are three important points in the chapter — knowing, reckoning, and yielding,
“Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin”, verse 6. “Our old man” is the man in whom was found the activity of self-will. What has become of that man? There is not room in the universe for two independent wills; God’s will must be supreme. The man in whom is the activity of self-will was condemned and crucified with Christ. Faith brings the knowledge of this into the believer’s soul, and the effect is that he judges his own will and all its activity. Instead of glorying in it, and seeking to give effect to it in every possible way, the believer is afraid of his own will. He recognises it as evil and condemned. The only will he can trust is God’s will. In this way the body of sin is annulled, and henceforth the believer does not serve sin.
“For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord”, verses 10, 11. This supposes that the affections are so set upon Christ that we are prepared to take account of ourselves as being in the same relation to things as He is. He has died to the whole sphere where man’s will is active — that is, to the world socially, politically, and religiously. If we love Him we shall not care to go on with things in which He has no place, and in which He takes no part.
Then in verse 13 it is yielding. “Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God”. Knowing is by faith, reckoning is by love, but yielding is by the Spirit. The kingdom of God is maintained in our souls in its practical power by the Spirit, and in coming thus under God’s control we escape from the innumerable evils of a lawless will.
I dwell upon all this because it is the essential groundwork in the soul preparatory to Christian fellowship. Everything that is contrary to the spirit of Christian fellowship can be traced either to man’s lawless will or to his active mind. Both have been judged and set aside in the death of Christ, and the Holy Spirit would maintain that judgment in our souls so that we might practically renounce both. If the will or the natural mind come into activity, fellowship is hindered: we do not “all speak the same thing”; we are not “perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment”, 1 Corinthians 1: 10.
“The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ?” 1 Corinthians 10: 16. What comes out here is that Christian fellowship is a fellowship in blessing. We are brought into infinite blessing, the joy of which is common to all our hearts. But all the blessing into which we are brought lies outside the sphere of our natural life as men upon the earth. The very ground and basis on which it all comes to us is death. We cannot exhibit our blessing to the natural man, for it is entirely of a spiritual order. The things which are freely given to us of God are things which “eye hath not seen”, etc. They lie outside the range of the senses; they are spiritually discerned. And, further, they are things for which the natural man has no taste or desire.
In Luke 22: 20 we read that the Lord said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you”. I should like to read a few verses in Jeremiah 31:11-14, to show the character of new covenant blessing. “For the Lord hath redeemed Jacob, and ransomed him from the hand of him that was stronger than he. Therefore they shall come and sing in the height of Zion, and shall flow [p. 148] together to the goodness of the Lord, for wheat, and for wine, and for oil, and for the young of the flock and of the herd: and their soul shall be as a watered garden; and they shall not sorrow any more at all. Then shall the virgin rejoice in the dance, both young men and old together: for I will turn their mourning into joy, and will comfort them, and make them rejoice from their sorrow. And I will satiate the soul of the priests with fatness, and my people shall be satisfied with my goodness, saith the Lord”. Mark those words. “They ... shall flow together to the goodness of the Lord”, and “My people shall be satisfied with my goodness, saith the Lord”. New covenant blessing is the outflow of the goodness and love of God to men. All through Scripture we see that, whatever form of evil manifested itself, God met it by a promise in which He engaged Himself to dispossess the evil by bringing in corresponding good. We see a whole system of evil in the world as it is, but God is going to bring out a whole system of good to displace it. He will bless man fully in His own goodness. But before God’s system of good — His universe of bliss — is brought into display publicly, it is all established in Christ, the risen and glorified One. Our hearts discern and apprehend it in Him. As energised by the Spirit in the inward man we have the joy of it now — the joy of blessings that are wholly of God, and the outcome of His goodness and love.
But if brought into blessing which is entirely of God, and which belongs to His world, we are morally bound to be entirely separate from man’s world and all that obtains there. This comes out in, “The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?” Christ rejected, cast out, nailed to the cross, expresses the nature and the greatness of the breach between God and the world. The utter evil of everything that has influence in the world — system is proved. Then how can we go on with it? Shall we not say, “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world”, Galatians 6: 14. It is sad to see a believer shunning the narrow path of separation.
The world takes very attractive and seemingly innocent forms. It even covers itself with a veneer of Christianity. But it is the same world that crucified Christ, and to which He has died. When you are asked to go into things, put the question to your heart, Is Christ there? Has He any place in it? You may be sure of it that Christ has no place in the world, whether you view it in its political aspect, or its social aspect, or its religious aspect.
Then in 1 Corinthians 11 we get the new circle to which the Lord brings His own. The Lord’s supper is the true rallying point for Christians. Christians nowadays rally round gifted men and make them centres, but the Lord never intended this.
[p. 149] It was on the same night in which the Lord was betrayed that He instituted the Supper. If we would know the atmosphere that surrounded that first Supper we must read John 13 and 14.
The Lord declares the judgment of this world in John 12, and He washes the feet of His own in chapter 13, so that, in figure, they might be free from all the contamination of that judged scene. Then comes the terrible announcement that one of His disciples should betray Him. Ah! the flesh is not one bit affected by the love of Christ. Do not let any of us suppose that our flesh is better than Judas. In the estimation of the flesh self is everything and Christ is nothing.
In Peter we see the weakness of the flesh even where there was, through grace, a work of God in the soul. Peter had confidence in his flesh, but it would not stand the test. It is good that the flesh should be thoroughly exposed so that we may have no confidence in it. For the Lord has brought something to light for our hearts which will stand every test. That is divine love: “Having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end”, John 13: 1. “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another”, verse 34. The Lord had been with His own in all the perfection and blessedness of divine love; He had brought that love into the consciousness of their souls. He had made known to them a love which had its source and spring in the depths of the heart of God, and which could never break down. That love flowing into their hearts had become a spring of love in them, so that He could say, “as I have loved you, that ye also love one another”.
Flesh in Peter broke down, but we must not forget that there was something in Peter that did not break down. He could say, when probed by the Lord, “Thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee”. The love revealed to him in Christ had become a spring of love in him, and this did not break down.
At the Lord’s supper we are in a circle where love is supreme. It is the blessed witness that the Lord loves His own, and His own love Him, and they love one another. If we detach the Supper from all those precious divine affections which are proper to it, we reduce it to a religious form — a sacrament.
[p. 150] We need to be diligently judging in ourselves everything that hinders the exercise and outflow of spiritual affections.
God has called us to the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, and to the fellowship of all those blessings which are given to us in Him, so that we may be prepared to accept the fellowship of His death and to be practically separate from the whole judged system of the world. Thus separate, we are free to be bound together in holy love as saints and brethren, and in eating the Lord’s supper to show forth His death until He comes. But while doing so “until he come”, we are not bereaved of the One we love. He has said, “I will not leave you orphans, I am coming to you”. That is, ‘to you who love one another’. He makes Himself a very present reality to our hearts, though He is entirely hidden from the eyes of men.
May we know better what it is to be in the fellowship to which as Christians we are called!